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Category Archives: search advertising

In the past two days Yahoo has made three big moves in the advertising tech world: unveiling ‘Yahoo Advertising,’ picking up Aviate to improve their mobile experience, and creating their own new tech hub, ‘Yahoo Tech.’

Yahoo Advertising

Yesterday at the Yahoo CES keynote, Marissa Mayer announced Yahoo’s new ‘all-in-one’ advertising solution: Yahoo Advertising. While the name isn’t glamorous, it strikes right at the heart of what Yahoo is trying to do: give advertisers “a comprehensive suite of web, mobile, and video ad products across native, audience, and premium display, which are accessible through a new buying platform.” While their ‘elevator’ is something you’d hear in any vendor meeting on the proverbial Madison Avenue, the new platform does bring some sense to Mayer’s recent run of acquisitions.

What is most notable is that the new platform finally gives Tumblr a clear role and purpose at the company, and a clear position for agencies to consider. Until recently, advertisers didn’t quite know how to utilize or even think about Tumblr. Marissa answered at least some of our answers with presenting Tumblr as the social arm of ‘Yahoo Advertising’ where companies will now be able to purchase sponsored posts as part of their overall buy with the purple giant.

Yesterday it was Mayer also announced that Yahoo has picked up the mobile company Aviate, which claims to be an “intelligent home screen service.”

While terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed, Mayer suggested that Yahoo was looking to use Aviate’s technology to deliver content in ways that are “smarter and more personalized.” Yahoo has had some great success with their recent mobile apps. Yahoo Weather, for example, looks sleek on any smart device and is my personal go-to out of the three weather apps on my phone. Depending on the terms of the deal, this seems to be a smart buy for the company and continues to open up their mobile opportunity for advertisers.

Finally, this morning Yahoo launched their new hub for tech news: Yahoo Tech. While Yahoo is jumping into a space that is beyond cluttered, chief editor and “founder” of Yahoo Tech David Pogue claims YT will be a tech site of a different sort, taking the more “human side of tech.”

Pogue’s introduction serves more as a introduction of himself and his take on the current tech editorial space. He clearly states what he is not: he’s not a gearhead, “If I were, I’d steer you to Engadget, AnandTech or Tom’s Hardware;” he is not a PR person, “I don’t speak that language. You’ll never catch me using terms like ‘price point’ when I mean ‘price,’ or ‘form factor’ when I mean ‘size.’ I’ll never say ‘content’ when I mean video, ‘solution’ when I mean product, ‘DRM’ when I mean copy protection, or ‘functionality’ when I mean ‘feature’;” and he is not a member of the tech clergy: “But honestly—you know what I wish? That the haters and fanboys of each tech religion could gather together in a big school gym and either (a) battle it out, (b) smoke peace pipes, or (c) finally acknowledge that this is a self-esteem issue, not a technological one.”

You can read the blog post yourself, but for me, it reminiscent of the time I sat in on a rural religious service and the minister made fun of people who could translate and interpret the original Latin text of the lesson we were reading. While I don’t think Pogue is going for an anti-intellectual vibe, it does come off as a little abrasive to people who do consider themselves in-line with all things tech. Nevertheless, it’s clear Yahoo is once again aiming for more premium content.

In sum, with a new network, more acquisitions, and more content, Yahoo is moving fast and furiously to make a big comeback and bring in a new era of advertising for the portal. It will be exciting to see how it plays out.

This morning the BBC is reporting that Bots account for 61% of web traffic (full story).

A recent Incapsula study found that total bot traffic is up 21% since their last study in 2012 and now represents 61.5% of website visitors. The study sites two reasons for the increased growth: evolution of web based services, e.g. SEO services that crawl a site at a rate if 30-50 visits per day, and increased activity of already existing bots due to shorter cycle rates.

The study also reports that 31% of bots are still malicious, but that there are much fewer spammers. “While the relative percentage of malicious bots remains unchanged, there is a noticeable reduction in Spam Bot activity, which decreased from 2% in 2012 to 0.5% in 2013,” which the study partly attributes to Google’s anti-spam campaign.

The study also points out that the activity of “Other Impersonators” (a group which consists of unclassified bots with hostile intentions) increased by 8%. These bots generally attempt to take on the identity of other legitimate services, like a search engine.

While the latest increase in bot activity brings digital security to the forefront of the conversation, it is also important for the legitimacy of the publisher stats and numbers for advertisers. Agencies must always think about how interpret first party figures, how to verify with 3rd party services, and and be on the lookout for outliers.